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In this study, Jacob A. Rodriguez investigates which gospels tended to keep company with one another in early Christian reading practices. By engaging the dynamics of gospel combinations in the Gospel of Thomas, the Epistula Apostolorum, the Diatessaron, second-century Christian authors ranging from Papias to Clement of Alexandria, and early gospel manuscripts, Rodriguez identifies a center of gravity in early Christian gospel reading consisting of the Synoptics and John. While second-century Christians do not use the terms'canonical? or'noncanonical,? the gospels we now know as canonical captivated their literary imagination in a manner unparalleled by any other Jesus books. The author offers a rigorous philological, literary-critical, text-critical, artifactual, and theological reconstruction of early Christian gospel-reading culture.

Psychology of religion has been enjoying considerable attention of late; the number of publications and people involved in the field is rapidly increasing. It is, however, one of the oldest branches within psychology in general, and one of the few in which an interdisciplinary approach has been kept alive and fostered. The fate of the field has been quite varied in the countries where psychology of religion has been initiated and developed during the 20th century. In this volume, some aspects of this international history are examined. Coming from six different Western countries, each of the contributors has a record in the historiography of psychology and profound knowledge of psychology of religion. Their approaches combine elements from the history of mentalities, the social history of science and biographical studies.The volume contains in-depth treatments of such topics as the growth of the field as reflected in university politics, developments within international organizations, and the personal involvement of contributors to the field. A wealth of information is provided on the background of the work of well known psychologists of religion like James Henry Leuba, Oskar Pfister, Gordon Allport, Werner Gruehn, Antoine Vergote and others.

Psychology of religion is one of the rare fields in psychology where an interdisciplinary approach has been preserved. Psychohistory especially, understood as the systematic application of psychological knowledge in explorations of the past, has enjoyed substantial attention. Traditionally, the emphasis in such studies has been on biographical research. This volume attempts to broaden the horizon and to include studies of phenomena as well on a group or subcultural level. The volume contains chapters on such subjects as apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Belgium, attitudes towards suicide in seventeenth-century Sweden, the pillarization of Dutch Calvinists. There are also studies of famous individuals such as Hitler, Stalin, Freud, Van Gogh and J.H. Newman. Among the contributors are well-known authors like Donald Capps, Michael P. Carroll, William W. Meissner, Ana-Marìa Rizzuto and Antoine Vergote.

​Religionspsychologie ist erneut dabei, in Mode zu kommen. Doch was ist Religionspsychologie?Diese und andere interessante Fragen werden beantwortet, indem sich der Autor der International Association for the Psychology of Religion zuwendet, die 2015 ihr erstes Jahrhundert vollendet und damit eine der ältesten Organisationen in der Psychologie, den Religionswissenschaften und der Theologie ist. Ihre Geschichte war bewegt, lag aber bisher weitgehend im Dunkeln.Dieses spannend geschriebene Buch bietet nicht nur eine Fülle von Details zur Geschichte und Gegenwart des Faches, sondern vor allem auch eine hervorragende Grundlage für eine Bestandsaufnahme und Evaluierung der Religionspsychologie.Kritisch, aber nicht ohne Humor, ist es einzigartig im ständigen Einbeziehen internationaler Perspektiven. Empfehlenswert für jeden an Religionspsychologie Interessierten.

Zwischen Musik und Religion gibt es vielerlei Beziehungen: Bekannte religiöse Texte sind unzählige Male vertont worden, religiöse Institutionen haben Kompositionen in Auftrag gegeben, in religiöser Architektur finden Konzerte statt usw. Auch der Psychologie gibt das Thema “religiöse Musik” viele Fragen vor: Warum berührt religiöse Musik Menschen oft eigentümlich, sogar solche, die sich als nicht-religiös empfinden? Sind Religiosität und Musikalität evolutionär-psychologisch analog zu verstehen? Haben Religion und Musik gleiche pränatale Wurzeln? Dienen sie denselben psychologischen Funktionen? Wie ist die manchmal therapeutische Rolle von Musik in religiösen Kontexten zu verstehen? Dies sind nur einige der Fragen, denen sich die AutorInnen in diesem Band widmen. Sie gewähren einen aufschlussreichen Einblick in die Möglichkeiten psychologischer Analyse der Beziehungen zwischen Religion und Musik.

In the past four decades or so, the so-called psychology of religion – after having been deemed extinct, impossible or unlikely – has risen to prominence again: the number of publications is rapidly growing, an impressive secondary literature (handbooks, introductions, etc.) is available already, infrastructure has been developed (a number of new journals devoted to the subject have been founded, organizations have been established, increasingly funding is going to the area), attracting many new researchers. Organizations like the American Psychological Association are now publishing in the field of psychology of religion (and its Div. 36 [“psych of rel”] with almost 3,000 members is already midsized among the APA-divisions). This book documents this re-emergence and development.

The aims pursued in this book are quite modest. The text is not an introduction in the traditional sense to any psychological subdiscipline or field of application, nor does it present anything essentially new. Rather, it shows ‘work in progress', as it attempts to contribute to an integration of two differently structured, but already existing fields within psychology. In order to explain this, it is probably best to say a few words about how the book came into being and about what it hopes to achieve. As a project, the volume owes very much to others. While lecturing in places ranging from South Africa to Canada and from California through European co- tries to Korea, colleagues have often urged me to come up with a volume on ‘c- tural psychology of religion'. For reasons that should become clear in the text, I feel uncomfortable with such a demand. To my understanding, there exists no single cultural psychology of religion. Rather, there are ever expanding numbers of div- gent types of psychologies, some of which are applied to understanding religious aspects of human lives or to researching specific religious phenomena, while others are not. Within this heterogeneous field that is, correctly or not, still designated as ‘psychology', there are also many approaches that are sometimes referred to as ‘cultural psychology'or as ‘culturally sensitive psychologies'. It would be wor- while applying many of these to research on religious phenomena, but at present not too many are in fact so applied.

The psychoanalytic approach to religion has changed radically during the course of the twentieth century. In both clinical and theoretical work in psychoanalysis, developments have taken place that frequently are not noted by persons who assume that all that can be said has been said by Freud. The study of religious phenomena, persons, events and traditions has always been a substantial part of applied psychoanalysis and here also major developments have taken place. It is no exaggeration to state that the scientific study of religion has been revolutionized by the integration of psychological perspectives, including the field of psychoanalysis. This volume differs from other recent publications on the topic of psychoanalysis and religion in drawing upon the entire field of psychoanalytic involvement with religion. It is interdisciplinary in approach and unlike other books on the topic brings together an exceptional combination of theoretical, empirical and clinical studies. No other book provides integrated examples of all three types of work.

This volume positions itself on the cutting edge of two fields in psychology that enjoy rapidly increasing attention: both the study of human lives and some core domains of such lives as religion and spirituality are high on the agenda of current research and teaching. Biographies and autobiographies are being approached in new ways and have become central to the study of human lives as an object of research and a preferred method for obtaining unique data about subjective human experiences. Ever since the beginning of the psychology of religion, autobiographies have also been pointed out as an important source of information about psychic processes involved in religiosity. In this volume, a number of leading theoreticians and researchers from Europe and the USA try to bring them back to this field by drawing on new insights and latest developments in psychological theory.